Christianity

During the Reformation, writes Christine King, Tudor agents demolished many venerated shrines, and made great use of the frauds and trickeries that they claimed to have detected.

G.R. Potter describes how one of the Reformers active in Berne during the early sixteenth century was also a painter and man of erratic genius.

Thomas More and his family moved into his ‘Great House’ in Chelsea in 1518. L.W. Cowie describes their life there, until More's arrest in 1534.

The Charity school movement in the eighteenth century, writes L.W. Cowie, was the first attempt to provide for the education of the children of the poor in England.

M.L. Clarke describes how, from the seventh century onwards, Rome attracted from Britain faithful pilgrims and churchmen with business to transact.

The Dissenting Academies, write M.D. Stephens and G.W. Roderick, offered wider and better teaching than the established universities in England.

York Minster was dedicated in 1472 after two and a half centuries of building. L.W. Cowie describes how it still affords insight into medieval life.

In the New Testament layers of tradition overlay accounts of John the Baptist. J.K. Elliott describes how these accounts were imposed by writers who altered historical details to suit their own doctrinal ends.

Nicolas Cheetham describes how the Fourth Crusaders captured Byzantium in 1204 and French noblemen created feudal principalities in Southern Greece.

Sarah Searight introduces the fifth century ascetic whose long life on top of a pillar attracted thousands of worshippers.